This study is the culmination of a US Army War College study effort to draw strategic lessons from our Vietnam experience. Using Clausewitzian theory and the classical principles of war, the book attempts to place the Vietnam war in domestic context as well as in the context of war itself. Its central thesis is that a lack of appreciation of military theory and military strategy (especially the relationship between military strategy and national policy) lead to a faulty definition of the nature of the war. The result was the exhaustion of the Army against a secondary guerilla force and the ultimate failure of military strategy to support the national policy of containment of communism expansion. Intended neither as a history of our Vietnam involvement nor as a definitive account of the war, the purpose of the book is to provoke and stimulate military strategic thinking so as to better prepare us to meet the challenges that lie ahead.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.